And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, and even though he had grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working-class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. And like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities that they never had for themselves.
尽管巴拉克有一个有趣的名字,尽管他一直在横跨大陆的夏威夷长大,当我第一次遇到他的时候,令我印象最深的却是,他的家庭和我的家庭极其相似。他由外祖父母和单身妈妈抚养长大,和我父母一样,他的外祖父母属于工薪阶层,而他的妈妈则为支付各种账单而忙碌着,这也和我们所做的一样。和我们家一样,他们精打细算,厉行节约,以便让巴拉克得到他们自己永远也得不到的机会。
And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond; that you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them.
巴拉克和我在成长过程中被灌输了许多相同的价值观,比如:要想在生活中得到什么就必须努力工作;话即契约,君子一言驷马难追;言必行,行必果;待人以敬,即使你不认识他们,即使你不同意他们的观点。
And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them on to the next generation, because we want our children and all children in this nation to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.
就是在这样的价值观指导下,巴拉克和我开始开创我们的人生,并把这些价值观传到下一代,因为我们想让我们的孩子和全美国的孩子知道,唯一限制你的成就高度的是你梦想的广度和为之努力的程度。
And as our friendship grew and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to work--the work that he'd done when he first moved to Chicago after college. You see, instead of heading to Wall Street, Barack moved to work in neighborhoods that had been devastated by the closing of steel plants. Jobs dried up. And Barack was invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.
随着我们之间友谊的加深,我越来越了解巴拉克。他向我介绍他的工作——那是他大学毕业后第一次移居到芝加哥时所做的那份工作。你们知道,巴拉克没有去华尔街工作,而是去了那些因钢铁工厂倒闭而遭受重创的社区。许多人失了业。巴拉克被邀请回来向那些地区的人们演讲如何重建他们的社区。